A device of the above described type is described, for example, in German Patent Publication DE 41 31 667 A1 in connection with a tube cleaning mechanism of a bobbin winding machine for producing cheese-type yarn packages.
Malfunctions can occur at the work stations of such cheese-producing textile machines, for example automatic cheese winders, during the process of rewinding spinning cops into large-volume cheeses, which malfunctions prevent the correct complete unwinding of the spinning cop tubes placed thereat. Such tubes with yarn remnants which are sufficiently small as to be unworthy of further unwinding must be completely cleaned, i.e. their yarn remnant completely removed, before they can be returned into the spinning/winding process.
In the course of this cleaning process, a tool is placed against the tube and is displaced parallel with respect to the tube axis to remove the remnant yarn, whereby it is necessary to center the tube exactly to avoid the danger that the tube, which stands on a disk-shaped transport body, a so-called transport disk or caddy, could be damaged.
With the device known from German Patent Publication DE 41 31 667 A1, the yarn remnants are loosened by means of a stripper which can be displaced along the tube, and the loosened remnants are subsequently suctioned off. As already indicated above, the tube body of the spinning cops having a yarn remnant stand upright on the arbors of disk-shaped transport bodies, which are conveyed by means of transport belts into the area of the tube cleaning mechanism of the bobbin winding machine, and are subsequently transported away therefrom to other operational areas of the machine over appropriate transport tracks.
During the process of removing the yarn remnants, the tube of the cop is centered, so that the cleaning tool can optimally operate by being exactly placed against the tube, and so that the tube is not lifted off the support body in the course of stripping off the yarn remnant.
For this purpose, the device in accordance with German Patent Publication DE 41 31 667 A1 has a centering arbor, whose operating height is exactly matched to the length of the cop tubes of the respective batch of yarn. When a new batch of yarn is to be wound, and the height of the tubes utilized for the new batch is changed, the centering device must be manually reset.
Thus, processing of tubes of different lengths is not possible with the known tube cleaning mechanism. In case the bobbin winding machine is occupied by several batches, wherein two or more groups of cops having tubes of different length rotate simultaneously through the transport system of the textile machine, it is necessary to employ two or more tube cleaning mechanisms, which are set to different heights.
A device for holding down and centering tubes is also known, for example, from German Patent Publication DE 196 50 735 A1, which has a rotatably seated holder with a plurality of centering arbors, which differ in diameter, as well as in length. Here, the different centering arbors can be used alternatingly.
However, it is disadvantageous in connection with this known device that the centering process can only take place automatically if the length and the diameter of the respective tubes to be cleaned have been previously determined in a relatively elaborate manner by sensor means, which as a rule are comparatively expensive. This known device has not found acceptance in actual operations within the industry.